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Cleremont Soup

A soup of onions, veal or chicken broth, butter, Parmesan cheese, and fried bread pieces.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cleremont Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Cut the onions and fry them in butter until browned, then drain the onions.

  2. Heat the broth in a pot and season with salt and pepper.

  3. Add the fried onions and Parmesan cheese to the hot broth.

Serve

  1. Serve with fried bread pieces.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + parmesan cheesetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,163 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Pepper + parmesan cheesetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,322 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  5. Parmesan cheese + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together577 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Onions
Fried until browned, they add sweetness and savory depth to the broth.
Butter
Frying the onions in butter adds richness and helps them brown.
Broth
Forms the liquid base of the soup and carries its savory flavor.
Parmesan cheese
Adds salty, savory flavor and a nutty aroma to the hot broth.

The step that matters

Frying the onions until browned. Browning develops sweet, deep flavors through the Maillard reaction and caramelization. Pale onions give a flat, less savory soup, so they should be deeply colored before draining.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, veal, pepper, parmesan cheese, bread):

  1. Tomatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, veal, pepper, parmesan cheese, bread. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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